FORT LUPTON — At 6-feet-8 and 390 pounds, Brian Shaw cuts an imposing swath wherever he goes. But it’s those fiery red eyes that make him look downright scary.

“I need to wear contacts like this and walk around and growl at people,” Shaw said.

Right. Either that or slip on sunglasses to hide the occupational hazard — ruptured blood vessels — he encountered during last weekend’s Strongest Man on Earth competition in Quebec.

For the record, Shaw doesn’t growl. He’s more the grunting type, but only when he’s hoisting 400-pound rocks, pulling 30-ton fire engines or flipping 40-pound barrels as if they were Frisbees. Other than that, he’s softspoken, mild-mannered and well-grounded. A gentle giant from top to bottom, which, in his case, is roughly a six-buck cab ride.

Welcome to the life of Brian. He comes from a small town, Fort Lupton in Weld County, but lives in a big, wide world — 5X to be exact. Any year now, he expects the rest of the world to acknowledge him as its strongest man. And maybe, one of these years, they’ll complete the sentence. Maybe, a decade or so down the road, they’ll call him the World’s Strongest Man . . . ever.

“I think that’s a possibility,” Shaw said. “It would be nice to be in the argument. I would take that as a compliment. It would be unbelievable to be considered that strong, but the way things have been going for me, I don’t see why it’s not possible. Why not?”

The way things have been going for him, the 27-year-old Shaw has barely had time to blink. In the early days of the century, he was an honorable mention all-state basketball player at Fort Lupton High School. Four years later, he was up to 240 pounds, 20 above his high school weight, and winding down his hoops career at Black Hills (S.D.) State.

It was then, when the early-morning windsprints ended, that he began to spend more time in the weight room. For Shaw, it isn’t just a room with weights. It’s his sanctuary, his comfort zone, his inner sanctum.

“Even as a basketball player, he got hooked on the weights,” said Kerry Brunton, Shaw’s high school coach who is now the school’s athletic director. “It’s amazing what he’s done, but that part of it doesn’t surprise me. He was always super strong and he’s always loved the weight room.”

Hard to stomach

Eating, however, is a different story. Shaw may be the only 390-pound man in the world who doesn’t particularly like to eat. Check that. It’s not so much eating as it is consuming the vast quantities of food and supplements — not steroids, as we’ll get to momentarily — required to gain 150 pounds in five years.

“Eating is work,” he said. “It’s like a job. Seriously, there are times when you have to eat when you don’t want to eat. You’re just sick of eating. You don’t want to see anymore food and you’ve just got to do it.”

Shaw is so busy eating, he doesn’t have time to measure portions or count calories. But he figures he consumes 10,000 calories a day, give or take. We’re talking complex carbs and lean protein, not pizzas and candy bars. Booze? Never touches the stuff. Beer? Please. He prefers 120-pound curls, not 12-ouncers.

“My mind works differently, I’ve figured that out,” Shaw said. “I don’t have those cravings where I need to have something to eat. I look at food as fuel. When I look at what’s on the plate in front of me, I say, ‘Is this going to help me get where I want to be?’

“If I was to go out like a typical guy in his 20s and have a few beers on a weekend, it would screw up my workout. It would take me two or three days to get to feeling normal again. I can go out and have a protein shake while everyone is drinking beer and be perfectly happy.”

Said Bonnie Shaw, Brian’s mother: “I really admire his discipline. That’s the thing that has impressed me the most. Shoot, I wish I could be that way. I’ll grab a cookie here and there, that kind of thing. He never does that. He’s very good at being dedicated to the regimen and the routine.”

On a typical day, he eats 2 or 3 pounds of meat, a dozen eggs and drinks a gallon of milk, just for starters. Ah, but man cannot gain 150 pounds, most of it muscle, by food alone. And lifting everything but the Chevy Tahoe in the driveway doesn’t make you a World’s Strongest Man candidate, either. At some point, genetics has to enter the equation.

“You can’t change your genetics,” said Randall Strossen, founder of IronMind.com, one of the leading strongman sites on the Internet. “Brian’s height really helps him. This is a group where, if you’re 6-3, 6-4 and 330-350 pounds, you’re kind of one of the guys. But Brian is a head taller than that. He’s big in an already huge crowd.”

Shaw’s dad, Jay, is 6 feet and about 190 pounds, and his mother is 5-11 and average weight. But the rest of the family tree has some thick branches.

“Brian has some big uncles down the family tree,” said Bonnie Shaw. “So I guess on both sides he fell into the right mix there.”

The right foundation

It isn’t just a matter of height. Many 6-8 basketball players are stringbean types who struggle to gain weight. Not Shaw. He has bones befitting that Bulky Boy clothing endorsement he recently snagged. Add in his huge hands and size-16 feet, and you’ve got the perfect storm, a world-class strongman waiting to happen.

“I’m naturally a very powerful person,” he said. “I’ve always been able to do this. The biggest tire, the heaviest stone . . . I’ve always been able to walk up and lift it. Odd strength is what it is, not weight-room strength. It’s brute strength, brute power.”

As opposed to, wink-wink, artificial power. Shaw came by his awesome physique honestly, and he wants you to know it. He is among the loudest anti-steroids voices on the strongman circuit, where drug testing is the exception, not the rule.

“That’s what he prides himself on,” said Larry Witt, national sales director for Golden-based AST Sports Science, one of Shaw’s early sponsors. “Brian will stick to that. It upsets him when he knows what guys are doing and it makes it hard for him to compete. But he still does well.”

“It frustrates me because when people see big guys, they say, ‘It’s all drugs,’ ” said Shaw. “That’s because people don’t want to work hard. But I’m out here almost every day. I haven’t missed two straight workouts in five years. It’s tough, it really is, but I don’t know if you’re ever going to have a completely tested sport.”

Quick rise up ranks

Shaw’s meteoric rise in the strongman game started in October 2005, when, on a lark, he entered the Denver Strongest Man contest and won. By June 2006, he had lifted and eaten his way to the pro ranks. These days, his career success is like a runaway train. Which, of course, he could pull, just as he routinely pulls 30-ton fire engines in the parking lot of the Fort Lupton Fire Department.

He finished third in the Strongest Man on Earth competition in Canada before heading to Romania for another weekend of competition. Next up: The holy grail, the World’s Strongest Man contest, scheduled for September at a site to be determined.

Generally, the early-to-mid 30s are considered the peak years for strongmen, but Shaw is ahead of the curve. To wit: He was the only man to lift six Atlas stones — weighing from 300 to 425 pounds — at the Strongest Man on Earth competition. With the World’s Strongest Man just over the dashboard, Shaw is a legitimate threat to win.

“Absolutely,” said Strossen. “He didn’t even make the finals last year, but right now he has to be considered a favorite for a podium position. If he can stay healthy, there’s no end to what he could do. He’s got these gifts. He’s the total package.”

Most of the big names in the sport are from Europe or Iceland, including Zydrunas Savickas of Lithuania, one of the favorites to win the World’s Strongest Man title. The biggest name of all, five-time WSM winner Mariusz Pudzianowski of Poland, may miss this year’s event. But regardless of the competition, Shaw believes he can win.

“I went up to Canada to win,” he said. “I finished third, but I went there to win. I’m definitely one of the newer guys on the scene. People are like, ‘Brian Shaw, who’s he? He’s beating guys he’s not supposed to be beating.’ But I’m so close to being the world’s strongest man. A lot of guys are expecting me to win in the next couple of years.”

Staying healthy top goal

As bright as Shaw’s future appears, there is a dark side to all this. Machines, not men, were meant to lift tractor tires and tug fire trucks. Muscle pulls and tears are commonplace among competitors. Two of the sport’s stars have died, including four-time WSM winner Jon Pall Sigmarsson of Iceland, who suffered a fatal heart attack in 1993 while practicing a deadlift.

Shaw, who has a degree in wellness management, is determined not to become a victim of a brutal sport. He has had one surgery to fix a torn thumb ligament in his teens. He eats constantly, but sensibly, and plans to drop down to 300 to 320 pounds when his competitive days are behind him. And yes, he has a steady girlfriend — 5-6, 125 pounds, since you’re no doubt wondering — and wants to have a family.

“I’m still pretty much an average guy,” he said. “If I need to, I’m disciplined enough to turn on a dime, eat clean, change my training and get down to whatever weight I need to be. I’m probably going to feel like a gazelle at 320.”

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